Dating : The Bottle Tree

The ghosts followed them from the dry heat of the cotton fields to the not-so-free North. They assumed they could escape them once they crossed the Mason-Dixon, but the horrors of the South could never be forgotten. They did their best to build their lives now that they couldn’t hear the whoosh of a whip, but the triggering sound woke them up in the middle of the night, sweat drenching their nightclothes. They never sleep much anymore.

“Mama,” Anna Mae said to her mother in the morning, shaking her awake.

“What do you want, chile?” Grace turned over, eyes squinting in the sunlight now peering through her window. Her daughter stood in front of her, frowning and barefoot.

Anna Mae stuck her face in front of her mother’s; her warm breath blew across Grace’s nose. Grace pushed her face away from her. “They won’t stop hangin’ by my bed, Mama. I woke up and they was starin’ at me.” She stepped back as Grace rose and sat on the edge of her bed. She sighed.

“The ghosts won’t bother you, Mae,” she said. “Just don’t bother them.”

Anna Mae groaned. She was exhausted; the spirits kept her up for the last few nights, and she hoped her mother would be able to shoo them away. Grace was used to Southern ghosts; they wandered the land while she worked on the plantation, and they appeared often before she shut her eyes after a long day in the sun. But she never did anything about them. She wasn’t worried about the troubled souls who continued searching for peace after being born into terror.

“They did nothin’ to ya, Mae. They just hurtin’.”

“But they won’t let me sleep.” Anna Mae exaggerated a yawn, and her mother rolled her eyes. “What if they touch me, Mama? Will it kill me?”

Grace got out of her bed and put her slippers on. Looking at her only child, she offered a reassuring smile. “They won’t hurt ya, or else they woulda done it by now. Come on.” She stood up and offered her hand to her daughter. “I’ll help you capture the ghosts after breakfast.”

***

Later in the morning, Anna Mae and Grace sat under the tree sitting behind their two-story house. It was mid-July, so the branches were full of deep green leaves that rustled whenever a gust of wind blew every once-in-a-while. Next to Grace sat a crate full of blue glass bottles, and she placed a ball of twine and a pair of scissors in front of her.

Looking at her daughter, she said, “We’re gonna make a bottle tree to get your ghosts out.”

“What’s a bottle tree, Mama?” Anna Mae loved when her mother told her about her life in the South. She hated all the bad things she endured — the whippings, the blisters on her fingers from picking cotton for much of her life, and watching her siblings get sold to other plantations — but she relished in the cultural pieces of the South that her mother brought with to the Midwest. She was grateful for never having to experience the horrors of plantation life, and she admired her mother’s courage to escape.

Grace smiled. “A bottle tree captures the spirits wanderin’ around. It can hold your ghosts so you can sleep at night.” She picked up two bottles from the crate and set one in front of herself and the other in front of Anna Mae.

Anna Mae asked, “What are we gonna do with the bottles?” She watched Grace take the twine and unroll it. When it was long enough, she cut it. She did it again and gave the second piece of thread to Anna Mae.

“Tie the twine around the mouth of the bottle, Mae,” Grace told her. “We’re gonna tie these bottles to the lower branches of the tree. I can’t reach much farther up, but I hope the ghosts will still get stuck inside.”

“But what if they won’t come outside?”

“They’ll come out, don’t worry.” Grace tied her bottle.

“But Mama, they might not come out.” Anna Mae pouted and twiddled the twine in her fingers. She was skeptical of the bottle tree idea. She wanted to trust her mother, but the ghosts that haunted their house were relentless.

“These bottles will trap the ghosts, Baby.” Grace took the twine from Anna Mae’s hand and tied it around the bottle. “Can you help me tie these bottles up?” Grace cut more pieces of twine for the rest of the bottles. As the pair set up the bottles, Anna Mae told a story about her life in the South.

“What I’m gonna tell you will make you sad. But you gotta understand how bad it was for us down on the plantation, Baby Mae. I’m not gonna give you the worst of it, but I can’t hide this from you. Do you hear me?” Anna Mae nodded, quiet and listening intently to her mother.

“Good. I have to tell you about the time I watched Master take my brother away from me.”

Anna Mae stopped tying a bottle. She was in shock; her mother never told her that she had siblings. “I thought it was just you and Granny,” she said.

“It was after Master took his life away. He was older than me and worked in the fields longer than I did. He was sick of workin’ in the heat all day, blisters bursting open over the puffs of cotton and inside his shoes. He complained day in and day out about workin’ them fields. The overseer found out about his complaints and told Master about him. He wasn’t too pleased.

“We had to gather after work one evening by a tree in Master’s yard. He had my brother standin’ next to him with a rope ‘round his neck. Mama was screamin’, ‘please, please!’ She was cryin’, and I stood there with no emotions. I didn’t know what was goin’ on. My brother was angry, people huddled in bunches, upset about the scene, and someone whispered in my ear, ‘You don’t need to be seein’ this,’ turnin’ me around. But I watched.

I watched Master push my brother over to the tree and throw one end of the rope over a branch. Mama’s screams was the only thing I could hear. Master had the overseer pull the rope, and I watched it get tighter and tighter around my brother’s neck. I gasped, and I could hear him strugglin’ to breathe. Someone covered my eyes and pulled me away. His body hung there for a week.”

Tears clouded Anna Mae’s vision. “It’s alright, Baby.” Grace got up and hugged her daughter. “He knew in life he wouldn’t be free, but he hoped his spirit would.”

“Did it? Did his spirit get free?”

Grace sighed. “Almost,” she said after a moment. “Not yet.”

***

The next afternoon, Anna Mae was spending time gardening. Her mother asked her to pull out the weeds fighting their way through the bed of carrots. She hated taking out the weeds and would rather play with the dead dandelions. She would blow on the white tufts and wish the ghosts away. It never worked, but she never stopped wasting her breath trying.

After ridding the soil of weeds, Anna Mae gazed at the bottles that were strung from the branches on the tree, swaying in the breeze. She looked past the blue glass and gasped — a noose hung from a branch and it was low enough to reach her neck. “Mama!” She rushed towards the house and screamed. In the window to her bedroom, she could see a figure staring at her. It wasn’t her mother.

She screamed, and Grace ran outside from the back door. “What’s wrong, Anna Mae?”

Anna Mae pointed at the window. Grace looked up at the ghost staring down at them, a noose tied around his neck. She wasn’t scared; she was relieved as she gestured for the spirit to join them. He nodded and disappeared. Grace simply smiled.

“Mama,” Anna Mae whimpered, shaking against her mother’s hip. She buried her head in Grace’s back, too afraid to witness the spirit again.

“Shhh. It’s gonna be alright.” The ghost now stood in front of Grace, the rope dangling from his neck. Grace turned to the side and pointed at the blue glass clinking and gleaming in the sunlight. The ghost nodded at her and made its way towards the bottle tree, stopping to kiss Grace on her forehead and sending a quick wink to Anna Mae before gliding away. Anna Mae peeked to catch the action and watched the spirit get sucked into the bottle lowest to the ground. It was the first one she hung on the branches during the previous day. The glass gleamed in the sunlight and swayed from the force of the spirit entering the bottle.

“It worked, Mama!” she exclaimed. The child ran to the tree in awe. She held the bottle in her hand and giggled. “Is he really in there?”

Grace smiled. “Yes, Baby Mae. He’s in there. And he won’t get out and bother you when you sleep.”

Anna Mae’s smile faltered. “Was he….”

Tears in her eyes, Grace nodded. “Yes, he was Baby Mae. And now he’s free.”